The VM::EC2::Security::Credentials object is returned by the VM::EC2::Security::Token->credentials() method, which in turn is generated by calls to VM::EC2->get_federation_token() and VM::EC2->get_session_token(). The Credentials object contains time-limited EC2 authentication information, including access key ID, secret access key, and a temporary authentication session token.

A Credentials object can be passed to VM::EC2->new() via the -security_token parameter, in which case the -access_key and -secret_key parameters can be omitted.

As Credentials typically need to be transmitted from a process being run by an AWS account holder to a process being run by another user, the object provides serialization methods that allow the object to be transmitted as a simple string.

accessKeyId() -- The temporary access key ID
secretAccessKey() -- The secret access key
sessionToken() -- The temporary security token, as a long
opaque string
expiration() -- The expiration time of these credentials, as a
DateTime string.

As in all VM::EC2 classes, mixedCase() and broken_out_with_underscores() names may be used interchangeably.

These two methods allow you to serialize the credentials into a string suitable for sending via SSL, S/MIME or another secure channel, and then reconstructing the object at the other end. For sending the credentials to a non-perl process, you can simply retrieve each individual field (access key, etc) and send them individually.

Create a new VM::EC2 object which is authorized using the security token contained in the credentials object. You may pass all the arguments, such as -endpoint, that are accepted by VM::EC2->new(), but -access_key and -secret_access_key will be ignored.

This package and its accompanying libraries is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL (either version 1, or at your option, any later version) or the Artistic License 2.0. Refer to LICENSE for the full license text. In addition, please see DISCLAIMER.txt for disclaimers of warranty.